The Harrisburg School Board met Wednesday to deal with something it never expected, more state money.

With deep cuts in staff and programs, the question at the meeting was, "What can we now save?"

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The board voted unanimously to spend more than $900,000 to have half-day kindergarten next school year and to set aside $879,000 from a 2.5 percent tax increase to fund kindergarten the following year.

The board also voted to put more than $402,000 in reserve for football, basketball and other athletic programs.

These actions will be taken while the board waits to see how much money the Harrisburg Schools Foundation will raise by next month, which will go towards saving the athletics program.

More than $107,000 will go to restore clubs and extracurricular programs.

Another $340,000 will bring back at least six elementary school teachers who were among 63 teachers eliminated at the end of the last school year.

"We're pretty satisfied. We didn't all agree how to get there, but at the end of the day we got our programs reinstated, and I'm pretty pleased with that," said school Director Rhonda Mays.

"This is another tax," said school board member Brendan Murray.

Murray led the narrow vote against the pay-to-play policy for student athletes. The policy would require students' parents to pay for their children to play sports.

"We don't need it. We have the money. There's no need for pay-to-play," Murray said.

The board spent a large portion of the meeting restoring programs it had cut before additional state revenue was made available.

The board is also hoping to have some money left over at the end of the next school year to avoid another year of the deep cuts the district has faced for three straight years.